1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to the field of photography, and in particular to a compact camera with a deployable or extendable flash unit. More specifically, the invention relates to a compact camera having a flash unit that is flipped up from the camera body to be used and is flipped down against the camera body for storage.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A current trend in most camera design is to incorporate an electronic flash unit in the camera housing and yet make the housing relatively small in order to improve its ease of storage, portability and handling. As a consequence of making the camera housing small, however, the separation between the built-in flash unit and the taking lens is reduced, which possibly creates an undesirable effect commonly known as "red-eye". When using a flash unit and color print film, red-eye is typified by the pupils in the eyes of a person being photographed coming out red-tinted on a resulting color print. This phenomenon is attributable to the incidence into the taking lens of the red light reflected from the retinas in the person's eyes illuminated by the flash light.
Red-eye may be substantially avoided by increasing the separation between the flash unit and the taking lens. As a result, the light emitted from the flash unit will reach the eyes of a person being photographed at too great an angle to be reflected by his or her retinas into the taking lens. In this connection, prior art U.S. Pat. No. 4,545,661, issued Oct. 8, 1985, discloses a folding camera wherein a housing cover portion including a taking lens and a flash unit is pivotable relative to a housing main portion between a closed or folded portion in which the taking lens and the flash unit are concealed within the housing main portion and an open or unfolded position in which the taking lens and the flash unit are elevated above the housing main portion. Once the housing cover portion is raised to its open position, the flash unit can be popped out of the housing cover portion to increase the separation between the flash unit and the taking lens. Other prior art patents, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,557,571, issued Dec. 10, 1985, and 4,996,548, issued Feb. 26, 1991, each disclose a compact camera wherein a flash unit is flipped up from a storage position in front of a taking lens to an operative position elevated from the taking lens.